Before and After, Citizens' Arrest, and Dangerous Ignorance

I'm so tired of whiney, ignorant people.

I love my friends like Carrie Newcomer who, bless her peaceful Quaker heart, see good in everyone. And she tries really, really hard to see good even in people you absolutely know she couldn't possibly see anything good in, but you know will never get her to utter a bad word about. I was at her Rhythm and Roots series performance on March 21st in Tucson, and she is an absolutely amazing lyricist and this CD, Before and After, her 12th one on Rounder, is wonderful. There are at least 5 songs on it that I will want to put in my Carrie set on my iTunes to listen to again and again.

I'm digressing here, but speaking of iThingies, I figured out how to do video clips on my iPod and put 'em together in iMovie earlier this month and post it on You Tube. It features CODEPINK Tucson & Bisbee folks talking about the CODEPINK bridge actions on International Women's Day (March 8th) that were done in solidarity with Women for Women. It is by no means great but I was happy to do it and happy to see so many beautiful Pink and Green folks come out in support of building bridges to peace.

Oh and before I get back to bitching about people... I want to thank Jodie Evans and the dedicated Pinkers from the L.A. area who attempted to arrest the war criminal Karl Rove yesterday March 30th, 2010. There are a ton of links on this page to videos of the attempted arrest, interviews with participants, information on war crimes committed by members of the Bush II administration, and the arrest papers they carried with them yesterday that began,

"Arrest Complaint
 
In the matter concerning:

United States of America, plaintiff v. Karl Christian Rove, defendant
 
Under the authority provided private citizens by California Code: 837, you, Karl Christian Rove, are being placed under arrest for high crimes against the people of the United States committed during your role as Deputy Chief of Staff to President George W. Bush as well as while serving as a campaign consultant during the U.S. presidential elections of 2000 and 2004. ..."

In Arizona this would be the info you would incorporate in an arrest complaint:

Arizona Code: Title 13 - Criminal Code

Arizona Revised Statutes

§13-3884. Arrest by private person
A private person may make an arrest:
1. When the person to be arrested has in his presence committed a misdemeanor amounting to a breach of the peace, or a felony.
2. When a felony has been in fact committed and he has reasonable ground to believe that the person to be arrested has committed it.

I swear the choreography of the ignorant masses is developed and tested here in Arizona. The Tea Party threats and intimidation tactics have been dealt with here for the past 5 years at least in the form of Freepers (I'm not providing a link on purpose-- no need to give them an assist in their Google rankings.)

I'm actually more than tired of groups trying to step all over my rights with their religion. I believe in tolerance and acceptance as a Christian value, but it really tests my resolve when ignorance is touted and paraded about by gun toting, Bible thumping, power hungry and control thirsty, only a couple degrees removed from domestic terrorism bullies, many of whom are in Congress, who called me anti-American and unpatriotic during the Bush reign of terror. I'm even more perturbed with people who knew the recision of rights and the unconstitutional actions of Bush admin were wrong, but who stood by and even chimed in with the Red White and Blue nonsense that has absolutely nothing to do with the ideals and values that were at the heart of the founding of our country. The U.S. education system has been in decline for decades, and generations have been trained to work as non-thinking wage laborers. We can now see the results. Tea party doofuses doing the work of the corporations and ruling families behind some of these corporations are fighting against the types of government programs that provide medical care for their parents. They are so brainwashed by FOX propaganda blasting out at them from every public Walmart shelf or motel lobby across the country. I'm p.o.ed that people will just blindly follow along... even intelligent conservatives ... even liberals will not step out in public enough to say, "Please turn the channel over to a different station," when assaulted by the Murdoch propaganda machine.

Grrr, grrrr, and double grrrr. This makes me as angry as religious extremists who believe abortion is murder. I don't believe that embryos, zygotes, blastocytes and fetuses are babies. That is my religious belief. Why should one religious belief about a non-viable lump of cells be imposed on others with different religious beliefs. The beginning of life and the matter of soul are purely philosophical definitions that vary so greatly between cultures and religions that we cannot impose these constructs on any one person without violating his or her rights under U.S. law. I can't tell someone to terminate a pregnancy. No one should tell someone she can't.

The intermingling of these two dangerously anti-freedom, anti-selfdetermination whacked out perspectives that seem to combine into something alarmingly like the anti-woman, fundamentalist violence usually attributed to Islamic extremists by "main stream" America. I am no longer going to remain silent about the danger inherent in politically conservative Christianity. Religion and government don't mix well in any democratic state. Fundamentalism in any form is dangerous. Any belief that says, "Only I and those who think like me are in possession of the truth" is evil. "If you meet Buddha on the road..."

Patriot Act Co-author Favored as Gonzales Replacement

Alberto Gonzales publicly announced his resignation as Attorney General of the U.S. publicly today after having turned in his resignation in to Bush on Friday.

This is no victory for America. This is a shuffle of a sniveling little suck-up and power-hungry elitist to a duplicitous situational ethicist. Even his old school legal buddies abandoned Alberto months ago.

Those of you who read Build Peace regularly or have even read it a few times know that I am an old fashioned girl who believes in old fashioned politics at least as they are presented if not how they actually existed--The Great McGinty is one of my favorite films of all time- watch it for a refresher course on how politicians are created and the power of a single act -- Simplification is dangerous in that "flip-sides" are far too simple of descriptive tools to ever be accurate... but the old

Republicans = Big Business
Democrats = Little Guys

dichotomy holds great appeal for me. That is how it was supposed to be in the world in which I was raised. Business versus the little guy. Nice and simple. But now what we have is:

Republican Party = Gigantic Business
Democratic Party = Enormous Business
Current Administration = Fascistic Corporatism

Gonzales was brazenly arrogant in his disregard for the essence of the law and ideology that shaped a pretty damn good country that had continued to expand individual rights while maintaining respect for education and moral training that supports the notion of responsibility in an individually empowered society.

Chertoff was an architect for the Patriot Act. He co-authored that tool used for the atrocious and vile perversion of American Justice. The P.A. is the document that undercuts the great original documents upon which the idea that was our noble America was based.

Gonzales ruthlessly applied the Act, but a greater though less overtly arrogant evil in Michael Chaertoff is set to step into the Attorney General's office. The bureaucrats who actually build a corrupt administration wield tremendous, underestimated power. Joe Demsey might have been talking about Chertoff and company when reviewing Zackary Shore's book. "By creating a climate of distrust, uncertainty, and fear, his regime inadvertently denied itself the benefit of receiving important foreign policy information. Instead of performing their jobs, the first priority for career officers quickly became protecting their own livelihoods (and lives)."

Chertoff knows on which side his bread is buttered, and most assuredly works for his masters, and spews out what is advantageous to him at any given stage in his career. He played both sides after being brought in as a US Attorney in 1990 by Bush the 1st, then he was the sole US Attorney kept on by Clinton in '93, but as the tide turned toward Republican control, his balance shifted to a more partisan stance with his appointment as special prosecutor for Whitewater as he chose to align with the single ascending master of the emergent species of Republican ideology. He currently serves no other master than Bushite Corporatism.

As author of the Patriot Act Chertoff should be considered more dangerous to have in the Attorney General's slot than Gonzales.

A simple rule to follow is do not use an auto-mechanic who has named his or her business "Quality Mechanics," or buy your veggies from the "Fresh Market," or have your taxes done by "Value Accountants" -- adjectives tend to only be put in names when the good or service marketed under the name lacks or falls short in that area. The name doesn't require the adjective if the quality is present in the product or service. This axiom has never been better illustrated than in the case of the Patriot Act.

Another basic element of the Chertoff make-up seems to be his hesitation to act within clear bounds of authority and responsibility before checking with higher ups. Remember Katrina? Well it was Chertoff who effed-up royally and did not take the necessary steps to allow FEMA to begin to act (even under Brownie's "heckuva job" type leadership) until days into the disaster.

Someone stop these people! House? Congress? Last year didn't we as voters tell you loud and clear that we want all this ineptitude and all the duplicitous machinations stopped? I think so. If you are reading this it is your responsibility to make them listen to you and act to stop the Bushite's in their tracks. Now!